How Does US Rank on Women’s Equality?
At the top because the US is always Number One? Top ten? Below Rwanda?
The answer helps explain why couple equality is sometimes so difficult. Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst gives us the scoop in her recent blog Economix. There are at least four different published rankings that consider some aspect of gender inequality that include the US. None of them places the US among the top ten.
The best the US did was #13 on the Human Development Index which takes into account life expectancy at birth, enrollment in schools, adult literacy and per capita gross domestic product. It ranked 19th on the Gender-Related Development index. On a third measure, The Gender Empowerment Measure, which takes into account relative levels of political participation and decision-making power, economic participation and earnings, the US ranked 18th. On the Gender Equity Index, on a scale of 100, the US ranked 74th in 2009, below Rwanda.
We have written in earlier blogs about the ways in which corporate culture and social policies in our country continue to work against gender equality in families. These statistics show how far behind the US is regarding gender equality relative to other countries, both developed and developing.
Post by Anne
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April 8th, 2010 at 4:46 am
I’m grateful to you for sharing information about the Index–and sad to see where the U.S. is ranked. What is especially sad is the degree of public acceptance, even support, for men (and women) who openly seek to resist progress and push back against the minimal advancements that have been made.
April 8th, 2010 at 9:02 am
You are so right Tom. It’s important to get information about these rankings out. I think lots of us just assume that the U.S. is close to the top in all these kinds of measures of well-being. Why shouldn’t we be? Good question! We need to start asking why we aren’t and what we can do.